A mail carrier who was caught using a yard as his personal toilet will not be fired. The incident happened last month at a home in southeast Portland and a neighbor, Don Derfler, captured the man in the act with his camera. …The incident was an embarrassment to the post office and the worker was immediately placed on unpaid leave. Now, a decision has been made to keep the worker but he will be transferred to a different route. A spokesperson said the administrative action was taken based on a postal service investigation but he did not elaborate. He also did not say which route the mail carrier has been assigned to cover.

I’m almost at a loss for words. I knew that it was virtually impossible to fire a bureaucrat. But surely this was an example of crossing the line?!? But I was wrong.

Two final thoughts: How many of us would keep our jobs if we did something like this? And isn’t it wonderful that the Postal Service monopoly isn’t giving any warning to the potential victims on the bureaucrat’s new route.

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7 Responses

That’s a pile of crap, not only would a normal person be fired from the job – they would be doing jail time.

It’s interesting there is no mention of the Union, who is behind the defense of this mail carrier. Or should I say mail dumper. So, in the end, this guy dumped one on the lawn and the other on the tax payers.

Personally, I fail to see the severity of the crime and I wonder whether concentrating on such details distracts from the core issue of monopolistic economic inefficiency.

While I would not condone habitual behavior of this type, I find it perfectly expectable (even if simply by virtue of the law of probabilities) that somewhere in the tenths of thousands of postal couriers, someone, someday had perhaps intestinal problems, little time to react, and decided to take a chance that he would not be photographed for what amounts to a petty offence. I’m sure it is not the first time it has happened and perhaps even UPS or FedEx couriers may have occasionally engaged in such transgressions. Why is that such an unexpectedly big deal? Do deer, raccoon and other critters wonder around the neighborhood with diapers?

The very appalled and concerned neighbors who are so offended by this petty assault on property would typically think nothing of venomously descending on city hall with pitchforks and all to condemn entire properties whenever some poor farmer wants to do something with his land a mile away from suburbanite balcony views.

The USPS has not been allowed to carry over any funds from year to year as all monies made go into the General Accounting Fund. For years before 911 the USPS was Congress’s cash cow. And Congress has spent over 75 billion dollars which the USPS had prefunded for current and future employees. All the USPS wanted was for that money to be repaid but Congress has already spent it on their individual states pork barrel projects. They start the year on fiscal day one in debt because of the forced prefunding. What other business is forced to do this. The U.S. public has been paying bills on line or over the phone which has caused a major downturn in the mail volume. By paying bills online and by phone the U.S. public has caused the closing of over 200 Visa and Mastercard facilities putting more citizens out of work. And now schools are not even teaching children how to write so this will continue the trend.